


Don't Look Back

by eiluned



Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Intimacy, Love Confessions, Post-Movie, Sex, couldn't find an existing tag to express that, people who have sex finally confessing their feelings for each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-12
Updated: 2012-10-12
Packaged: 2017-11-16 04:35:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/535564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eiluned/pseuds/eiluned
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's loved before, and it burned her cold and painful like frostbite.  When she was still a girl--a girl forced too early into womanhood--she swore she would never feel it again, that love was for children.</p>
<p>But it crept back into her heart when she met him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Look Back

**Author's Note:**

> Enormous thanks to SidheRa for the awesome beta read and to Amanda for helping me come up with a title for this thing. I love you gals! <3 As always, feedback makes me happy!

"I love you," she gasps amid moans and cries of his name, her body wracked with climax, arched and tense atop his in the tight circle of his arms.

The flood of pleasure banks slowly, and she melts against him, her face turned away from his to catch her breath. She doesn't even realize what she's said, not really. The feeling has always been there, lurking beneath the surface, informing her actions, her interactions with him, but it's a terrifying thing for her. She's loved before, and it burned her cold and painful like frostbite. When she was still a girl--a girl forced too early into womanhood--she swore she would never feel it again, that love was for children.

But it crept back into her heart when she met him.

He rolls suddenly, taking her underneath his solid body, and he catches her chin in a gentle hand--hands she's seen kill but are always gentle with her--turning her face to his.

"Do you mean it?" he asks, quiet and a little desperate.

His words filter into her mind, cut through the warm haze of orgasm, and her heart is suddenly pounding again. Love is for children, but maybe that's just a lie she's worn as armor for more years than she wants to count. _Love is for children,_ she told Loki, but that was a different layer of armor. He knew, knew what brewed between the two of them, what roiled in the space between like a storm building just over the horizon, and that compromised her. She couldn't let Loki see that, didn't want him to know because he would exploit it even more than he already had, but Clint...

Clint will never exploit her emotions, will never use them against her.

"Yes," she breathes, meeting his eyes.

He lets out a breath that's somewhere between a sigh and a moan, a sound of relief and pleasure, and he kisses her deeply, sinking a hand into her hair, sliding his arm under her shoulders to hold her close.

Their bodies move together again, frantic, because that confession broke down a wall between them. They are close, far closer than she had ever let herself come with anyone else, but that wall-- _love is for children_ \--had always been an insurmountable barrier, one that she had been too afraid to climb or knock down.

Their bodies are bruised, battered, but the pain makes her feel alive as they move together, his hips snapping against hers, her hands clutching at him. "Say it again," he moans, pressing his lips against the line of her jaw as he works himself inside of her. "Say it again, Tasha."

It's conscious this time, born of years of repressed emotion and less than a week of being terrified that she had lost him, and it feels like beautiful, terrible liberation when she draws in a breath and says: "I love you."

He brings her off again, tensing her body like a bowstring under his fingers, and she can hear the words again and again in her gasps and cries. Pressing his forehead against hers, he holds her tight, clutches her to his chest, thrusts deep and solid inside of her, and when he comes, her name is a prayer on his tongue.

"I love you," he groans, and she breathes the words in, letting them fill her lungs and flood her body.

"I love you," he whispers in the afterglow, his lips against her cheek and his body flush against hers.

She draws back to look at him, smooths her hand over his face, slides her fingers through his hair, and she loves him, has loved him for a long time. She doesn't know what this will mean come daylight, how it will change them or if it will change them at all. It's been there the whole time, secreted away deep underneath the surface like a sunken treasure. She will look at him in the morning light and see the same man she's seen for the last ten years, the man she's loved for nearly as long.

"I love you," she whispers in return.


End file.
